Canada is a principal initiator (founding country) of the alliance. This
Atlanticist outlook was a marked break with Canada's pre-war
isolationism, and was the first peacetime alliance Canada had ever joined. Canadian officials such as
Hume Wrong and
Lester B. Pearson and including Prime Minister
Louis St. Laurent worked in favour of the alliance because they sought to contain the
Soviet Union, as did other members, and because they hoped the treaty would help to eliminate any potential rivalries between the
United States, the
United Kingdom, and other European
great powers (principally at the time
France, but later including
West Germany), where Canada had to choose sides. During the 1950s Canada was one of the largest military spenders in the alliance and one of the few not receiving direct aid from the United States. The costs of maintaining forces in Europe combined with those defending its own vast territory and participation in the
Korean War caused strain on the Canadian budget during the 1950s. In 1969 then Prime Minister
Pierre Trudeau withdrew half of Canada's forces in Europe, even as many leftist intellectuals and peace activists called for a complete withdrawal from NATO. With the success of the Canadian participation in the
Suez Crisis, with the
United Nations Peacekeeping Force in Cyprus and on other UN peacekeeping missions like the
United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda,
United Nations Operation in Somalia I and
Unified Task Force United Nations Operation in Somalia II or the four-year commitment to
United Nations Angola Verification Mission II, perception in the 1990s evolved into the feeling that the forces had shifted from conventional warfighting to
peacekeeping missions. The bulk of Canada's military was focused on the less-glamorous NATO mission in
Germany, where there remained a brigade group and an air division. In all, over 5,000 soldiers at any given time were deployed until 1993, when the remaining Canadian troops were withdrawn from Europe by the government of
Brian Mulroney following the end of the
Cold War. The
peace dividend was spent elsewhere than on the military. Given the small size of Canada's military, most contributions to NATO were political but, during NATO's 1999
Kosovo War, Canadian
CF-18 jets were involved in the bombing of
Yugoslavia. Since it began in 2001 Canadian troops were part of the NATO-led mission in
Afghanistan,
ISAF. In March 2011, the
Canadian Forces participated in
NATO-led
UN missions in Libya. In 2019 it came to light that Canadian governments of the 21st century have been relative lightweights in the Alliance. ==Canada's foreign relations with NATO member states==